1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to kiln furniture made of refractory material and supported on a kiln car for supporting ware on refractory batts or tiles in stacked and spaced relationship during transportation and firing thereof in a tunnel kiln.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, most of the tunnel kiln car supported refractory kiln furniture modules have ware supporting shelves, batts, or tiles, that merely rest either on the supporting ends of, end caps or on a flanged portion of relatively short sections of solid or hollow support columns, posts, or pillars, which are loosely stacked together and not adequately supported or tied together as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,992,139, 3,997,289, 2,871,543, 2,118,641, G.B. No. 433,497, G.B. No. 734,062, or G.B. No. 676,026. Thus, the loosely assembled module is wobbley, the batt support pillars or posts are prone to shift, as a result of any sudden jar, sufficiently to allow the batts and ware thereon to fall and become damaged.
A more stable structure shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,969,126 utilizes a plurality of hollow posts of circular cross section including integral vertically spaced ledges on which four arcuately shaped corners of each of the abutting removable batts or shelves rest upon and which are interconnected and tied together by top end caps and top batts or plates.
Other kiln car structures utilizing hollow posts installed into and supported by heavy base blocks and connected by tie bars supporting a single upper level of shelves are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,330,267 and 4,348,175.
Still another kiln car structure shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,141,681 comprises a single chamber between a single base block with triangularly arranged sockets supporting three triangularly arranged hollow posts into which are inserted circular caps with projections thereon extending through triangularly arranged holes in a single interconnecting top shelf.
A further kiln car structure comprising triangularly arranged sectional pillars of square cross sectional shape each supporting one or more adjacent shelves each notched out and supported at three places, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,879,577.
The instant invention provides a stable multiple chamber kiln furniture module adapted for mounting on and movement with a kiln car. The module comprises at least three rows of relatively long hollow one piece integral posts of polygonal cross sectional shape arranged in a series of adjoining triangular shape patterns. The triangularly arranged posts are rigidly interconnected and supported at their opposite ends independently of the easily removable vertically spaced horizontal shelves each supported at three points by integral ledges or removable pins projecting from the posts.